Wasted

Jealousy

feasts 

Never

satiated 

It eats you 

Alive

Breeds hate

murders love

Wasted life

Dead Wood

of the several stacked by the wall

different people were uncomfortable

lying on the dead

Stolen Sacrifice

and the drum beat

incessantly

Driving the thought

Deeper 

His brain aches with

guilt

His heart full of 

sorrow

Borrowed from the 

overseers

District chose him to 

die

Overseers unable to 

look

Unable to watch unearned

death

Sacrifice innocent men to 

die

Saves rest to betray 

later. 

Blood and Lace

Doing things, minute and

Deep

Start the process, begins

the pain

It spills over onto the white

Lace

Stillborn

Head 

And legs

Stillborn clot

Roots still in 

roots still digging at

my soul

On the side

Toxic
wanton
forlorn

Infectious
avoiding
cynical

Running in place
I walk with them

Day dims
Deprogram
Deflate

I lurk with
The
     Black
     injurious
     infected
     unwanted
side

My side
secure in the crawling skin, mind

Sleep for shit, numb
for the day to come







Also by the author. Available for purchase

Bloody Treat

The skin comes off, first in small pieces, then in whole sections. Using a finger from only one hand he picks at the wet skin and has problems grabbing it. He finally manages to pinch the flesh, but puts ever more gingerly. Slow and steady he pulls from the wrist to the crook of the elbow. This piece is wider, so he grabs the steak knife and says gently. He rolls the skin off the arm and throws it over his shoulder. The skin hasn’t been hitting the ground. His dog is very happy. 

George makes a note of this. He still doesn’t have full control over him yet, but at least he is feeding him. He’d rather have bigger pieces, like the ones the man served himself at dinner. But He thinks it might take great effort, a puppet or not, to cut your own skin off. 

The skin slips out from under George’s paw and it slaps into his muzzle. He shakes his head and the meat drops to the floor. He quickly snatches it up and chews and swallows. 

George licks his paws and the sides of his snout for the remaining morsels and realizes that the man is not cutting anymore. The sounds he hears coming from the man are no longer from the cutting. These sounds were different.  From the back of the couch, he sees the man shaking, then the sounds became louder, not unlike his howls when he gets hurt by the man or when the man leaves him outside to long in the snow. 

George’s tail wags, barks and trots to the front of the couch. He barked and growled at the man. He picked up the knife in his mouth and put it on the man’s lap. He barked his deep bark and bared his teeth. The man's eyes met George's and the crying immediately ceased. He nodded, fighting back tears.

The man whimpered. He picked up the knife and went to work on the underside of his arm. 

Black Slug

Sluggish
Drive myself
into the pain with
screeching past

smooth over my edges
wish to be forgotten
wish to be a void
                                                      look unto me and see

nothing.

Costumed nihilist

Rise up
As I walk

My fingers claw
at the inside of my shins
hands grab an pull

the rest of me
buoyed by half-assed
optimism


I stand within myself
push my feet into my skin
like climbing into favorite jeans

Slip my arms into worn skin
like an old coat, over my shoulders
I shake and thrust out my arms

Reposition my sockets to see through the
holes, I blink. Work my jaw and open my maw
widen it into a grotesque smile

I squeeze air through my lungs
because that's what people do when
they don't want to die.


----





                                                                        Buy Me.

      Also by the author, available for purchase:

If this is the simulation, then what's the real world like?

I had a great idea for a story, until I watched the next in the series in the show Black Window,  San Junipero. The series depicts individuals in abnormal and sometimes surreal situations that usually result in tragedy and/or horror. This particular episode was a story about two women who regularly visit what you first believe is the past or the future. It turns out they regularly go into a simulated reality that provides refuge and/or stimulation to old and/or terminally ill people. 

http://www.themarysue.com/san-junipero-playlist/

I'm planning on revisiting the idea. It could still work, because I have a different twist. It became weird when I grouped it with a couple other occurrences. The other day, I was leafing through a book and talking to my wife and I referred to apples, and the next page I turned to, Eve was picking an apple. Then, yesterday, I asked my son where the phone was, and it rang.

Coincidences like this make me question reality.

Woes of the Trypophobic

Exploding into his eyes, no longer blocked by Johnson's head, Peter could not see directly in front of him. As the world in front of him slowly filtered back in to focus, Peter wanted to put the words back in his mouth. He feared he had revved Johnson up and had just signed on for a half hour long diatribe on the inherent evil of the welfare system.

"He's not aimlessly wandering, or whatever Hemingway shit you would write in your stories," Johnson said lighting a cigarette. He squinted his left eye reminding Peter of Popeye.

"Every time I see him, he's roaming on the grass or the shoulder of a road."

Exasperated at him or the smoke in his eyes, Johnson scoffed. "Can't people walk on the grass anymore? Everything's paved, gone the way of the concrete grave."

Not in the mood for his conspiracy theories, the most tolerable (because of its entertainment value) of which was that Kennedy and Elvis were rigging this year's election to ease the importation of drugs.  He was concerned for their friend, Angus.

"..and fucking Obama...he wants people to accuse him of being Muslim and not being born in the USA, because it frees him up to..."

"Angus ever tell you about lines or..."

"Cracks, not lines, cracks. Crack kills...Kills Angus anyway. Yeah, well, that would explain the grass wouldn't it...no lines."

"But he drives," Peter said.

"Stepping," Johnson lit his second cigarette off the first and inhaled deeply. "He has to step on them. He gets to car, he's fine. Should see him when he gets to the parking lot and has to follow a crack or line all the way until it ends. It took him an hour and a half to get into the grocery store once. Go anywhere with him, you better drive separate or you could be there all night."

"What happens when he does?"

"He took that shit with the 'mother's back'... 'Step on a crack, break your mother's back; Step on a line break..."

Peter told Johnson to get on with it with a glare.

"He thinks bad shit will happen. It's like OCD, anxiety or whatever on crack."

"No," Peter said, "not what he thinks will happen, but what happens when he steps on one?"

Johnson thought for a few seconds, took a drag from his cigarette, and said through a cloud of smoke, "Don't know. Not a conversation piece, know what I mean?"

"You never saw it happen?"

"No," Johnson said, obviously annoyed that they were talking about the same subject for more than a minute. "Seen him cowered in the corner of an alley once because the lines took him back there."

"Cracks," Peter corrected.

"Right, cracks," Johnson said absent mindedly.

"How'd he get out?"

"Don't know," Johnson said. "Left him there," and then he walked off.

Peter was not surprised by Johnson's response. Johnson once left him at the bar without a ride home after hitting it off with a girl, and was mad at him for making him wonder where he was later that night. The combination of sporadic absent-mindedness and almost total aloofness toward his fellow man did not make Johnson the most reliable of people, much less friend.  The door across the hall slammed, and Peter grabbed his keys and hurried out the door.

Everyone in this area of town walked everywhere. If you lived near the downtown area, you didn't really need a car. There were convenience and grocery stores, as well as anything else bachelors and others living pay check to pay check needed. Following Angus was not a problem. His crack obsession made him quite a slow walker.

After he made it to the door on the ground level, the routes and detours he took seemed to be mapped out. Angus knew which cracks he needed to avoid and which ways he needed to go. It was not until about a half a mile that Peter realized that he didn't know why he was following him. Angus knew his way. Like anyone with a disorder like his, he had his world figured out and was able to, with the help of adjustments, navigate through it.

But what happened when he couldn't?

Peter stopped.  Had Angus broken down in the alley that night Johnson was talking about and crossed the crack to get home? Did he have to be restrained or knocked out or drugged to be taken out?

After another mile, it actually began to irritate Peter. Like a gambler betting on obscure happenstance willing the unlikely to happen, he wished Angus would step on a crack. In the fading light, Peter stared at Angus's back trying to push him with his non-existent mind control to step on a crack.

Breathing heavily and visibly shaking, Angus suddenly turned and walked toward and then away from the entrance to an alleyway, jigging and jagging almost turning around and facing Peter. He turned again, and went into the alley way.

Peter stood at the entrance to the alley and peered around the corner. Angus was stationary in the middle of the alley, and had taken out his phone and was texting someone. Peter slinked around the brick corner to the alley, hunkered down and crept until he was behind a dumpster. Before he had a chance to feel ridiculous, or maybe talk himself out of doing it or something similar, Peter lunged out from behind the dumpster and shoved Angus.

Before he had a chance to react or catch himself, Angus's foot landed on the crack in front of him. Just as he did, Angus made a sound, almost like wood splintering and he grabbed his chest. He fell forward to the ground. His eyes were wide and he was not breathing.

Peter looked around him to see if anyone had seen what happened, more for verification than a concern for getting caught. Because, aside from falling from an apparent heat attack...

Before committing what he saw to his actual events of the day, Peter bent down to check for signs of life, and found none.

What he also did not find was the tip of Angus's right foot. Where the toes should be, where he stepped on the crack, his foot was cut. It was as if a  bloodless vivisection had been taken of his foot, right through his Chuck Taylors.

But he did see Angus's phone. He picked it up and read on the screen,:

"I can't...I need this," in response to the John382, who requested he leave someone alone.

"If I do, it'll take me, piece by piece..."

"Where," John382 asked.

"I'don't know. Think it just cuts...he's still behind me..." Then, in almost one word, "Ohmygod hes followingme. I think it's going to happenits..."

Peter began to walk forward, and began to sweat and his head throbbed with his increased heart rate. He stopped short of the crack directly in front of him. Struggling for air with panicked gulps, like a goldfish trying to breathe out of water, he scrolled  to read the rest of the message.


"Im finally free of this curse."